The following documents can provide you with general guidance on the organisational arrangements required for safeguarding:
Are they safe? Guides from Safe Network - http://www.safenetwork.org.uk/
Are they safe? Part A: This part will help you get safeguarding essentials in place.
Are they safe? Part B: Plan of action to put safeguards in place.
Are they safe? Part C: Information, resources and publications.
Guidance for Safer Working Practice for Adults who Work with Children and Young People
Positively Safe: A Guide to Developing Safeguarding Practices
Safeguarding Children & Young People: Standards for Good Practice in the Voluntary Sector
Statutory Guidance on Making Arrangements to Safeguard and Promote the Welfare of Children under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004
Staying Safe: A Consultation Document
In addition, there is some sector-specific support in this area available to VCS organisations:
Sound Systems - an accreditation scheme run by NCVYS to enable VCS organisations to critically examine their policies and practices around safeguarding, measure them against the recommended standards and work towards reaching those standards.
Keeping it Safe - a tool created by NCVYS to help VCS organisations work through the process of safeguarding. This resource includes information on ensuring that activities with young people are safe, that organisations have policies and procedures in place to deal with safeguarding issues and that staff and volunteers are safely recruited, managed and trained in order to work with young people.
SAFEchild - a registered charity dedicated to child protection. It provides child protection training, CRB checks, risk assessments and child protection policies.
Multi-Agency Working
The Children Act made it clear that the support and protection of children cannot be achieved by a single agency and that every organisation working with children, young people and families must play its part. Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children - and protecting them from significant harm - therefore depends on the effective co-ordination and joint working between agencies and professionals that have different roles and expertise (health, education, social care and VCS organisations to name but a few).
The Local Safeguarding Children's Board (LSCB) is the key statutory mechanism for agreeing how the relevant organisations in each locality will co-operate to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people, and for ensuring the effectiveness of what they do. It provides the strategic direction and operating framework needed. Within this, prevention is seen as the key to safeguarding and requires all organisations that come into contact with children, young people and their families to contribute.
Much of the co-ordination of preventive work takes place in the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership (CYPSP) and allied thematic partnerships, such as those covering health and community safety. It is the role of the LSCB to work actively to influence and co-ordinate all of these multi-agency arrangements and ensure that they operate effectively.
Links to all of the relevant LSCBs in the East of England are set out below:
Bedfordshire
Cambridgeshire
Essex
Hertfordshire
Luton
Norfolk
Peterborough
Southend
Suffolk
Thurrock
Third Sector Safeguarding
The third sector of VCS and other organisations providing services and support to children, young people and their families is both large and diverse and there is much good practice within the sector that can be shared and built on. In order to provide effective safeguarding support, a National Safeguarding Unit for the Third Sector has been established by the NSPCC and Children England (see link). The unit works closely with and through a number of delivery partners, umbrella groups and existing national, regional and local networks and infrastructures. This includes Children Matter East.
The Vetting and Barring Scheme
The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 laid the foundation for a new Vetting and Barring Scheme aimed at stopping unsuitable people from working with children and/or vulnerable adults by improving screening procedures for potential employees or volunteers, i.e. vetting, and building a register of everyone, whether paid or unpaid, who is allowed to or is barred from working with children and/or vulnerable adults.
From 12 October 2009 there will be a single list of those barred from working with children and a separate, but aligned, list of those barred from working with vulnerable adults. The Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) is responsible for deciding who should be placed on these barred lists, i.e. who will not be permitted to work with children and/or vulnerable adults, and for keeping a record of those individuals. The Criminal Records Bureau will run the application process. No distinction is made between paid and unpaid work, and all rules will apply to both volunteers and employees (see attached factsheet).
Other useful sites:
